


Speeding Cars

by PantaloonWarrior



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blizzards & Snowstorms, Cannibalism, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 09:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14078007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PantaloonWarrior/pseuds/PantaloonWarrior
Summary: Nobody goes out when it snows.





	Speeding Cars

**Author's Note:**

> There’s hardly any dialogue on this fic. I tried to make it as narrative as possible.
> 
> Title and some of the inspiration from a song Speeding Cars by Walking on Cars. Be careful if you decide to listen to the song, because it’s a really good one :)
> 
> With that said, prepare for a snow alert.

Josh steps into a room with square black and white tiles on the floor and a deep red curtain on the other side of it. There, at the right side of the large hall, is a stage. Small dining tables litter the floor thorough the place, where menus deck the old tablecloths. Josh walks across the room, bringing in the mud that his boots carry with them. Leaving wet, smudged trails behind him, Josh sits on a barstool, where a barman approaches him. He serves Josh, and while he speaks, he cleanses a glass.

For whatever reason, the man with the dark hair hanging low on his forehead starts telling Josh about the stage. Josh listens and doesn’t listen to him, silently savoring the warmth radiating down his throat.

The barman speaks. He says that people come out from behind the curtain and do things, like sing a song or two and act, which is rare for a town as dead as this one.

They have a performer tonight. Josh might want to stay and watch, the bartender suggests with the same monotonous voice Josh bets he’s used to tell the exact same words to dozens of men and women before him, who’d be unfortunate enough to break their cars in the same way he did only hours before. Here, right in the middle of fucking nowhere, but conveniently close to the hotel nonetheless. And just like that, Josh is forced to spend the night in the mountains where the curvy roads make a mess of themselves before leading their way here. Clearly it’s a place that no one ever visits and doesn’t have enough people to keep the damned one-horse town alive either.

Even the man who towed his car here wished him good luck, a sense of pity in his voice, before driving away in a hurry.

Thus it’s no wonder that Josh’s first instinct is to get himself a strong drink to down. He can’t bear the thought of staying sober when he’s suddenly going through a full-blown metamorphosis from an ordinary guy into a fat, two-legged purse that doesn’t have a working car to drive away with.

And the bartender keeps talking.

Josh grins into his glass at his stubbornness, hiding it well. He couldn’t care less about the petty stage that the man doesn’t seem to drop. And Josh is not the only one. The whole room is empty and dark, tables and chairs unoccupied but ready to receive and serve the same way the man is doing for Josh now. Musty odor of wood fills the room, its wax wafts strong in the air, probably coating every surface and the very counter that Josh rests his empty glass upon.

He’s about to open his own mouth and say something sarcastic, but is a tad too slow. For at that moment, Josh hears the sound of a piano. He turns around in his stool and sees another man, another face, sitting behind the worn-out piano that is framed with wood and is probably the only thing not waxed here. It’s scratched and old, cracked in some places for unknown reasons, refusing to reflect its surroundings.

Josh shifts his eyes back up so he can see the man that makes the piano sing its songs.

That face is pale, Josh perceives. It’s nearly ghostly, and it’s gentle - and sad. Josh watches the man play in front of the red curtain with a fatigued crease between his brows. All the lights are turned on him; three white shafts land there where he sits, and Josh can see the dust dancing in the air, moving softly to the tune that the pianist is playing. His eyes are closed, long eyelashes cast shadows on his milky cheeks. In a high contrast to his pale features are his red lips, his mouth hanging slightly open. He starts moving more vividly as the tempo changes into something more; his muscles look strained as he bounces on his piano stool, yet he moves his arms and fingers with a mesmerizing flexibility. Josh can’t really see it, but he can hear it. The stranger hits the keys and the tempo seems to divide itself into sequences of four, going slower, harder, and then faster again.

The man the bartender calls Tyler starts singing then, putting on a show for their one and only guest present to hear his music. Josh can barely make out the working man’s words as he stares at the stage, too occupied with his flaring senses. But he hears the name, and luckily, it sticks.

Tyler.

The song comes to an end, so damn shortly and unexpectedly that the keys rattle, eventually halting and killing the last notes that echo in the air, and Josh finds himself hitting his palms together. He does it slowly but firmly, giving birth to a mighty sound as he claps. Tyler opens his eyes at the applause and raises his head as if he didn’t know that someone was watching. He’s panting slightly as he looks at Josh, right through the dark and empty room and equally empty minds, and Josh can feel the intoxication taking over his brain. Tyler has a glass of alcohol of his own. He’d put it on his piano. The lights from the ceilings hit it just right, its prism casting iridescent colors over his eyes. The red of the curtain frames his head the same way the wood embraces his piano, swaying from a minor air currency between them.

Then, Tyler blinks for the first time after looking at Josh. He gets up, grabs his glass - and leaves. And only then, Josh can breathe again.

 

*

 

They meet in a corridor by chance that night. Long and dim, Josh sees him standing at the other end of it. Doors on the both sides, the man seems to feel the eyes on him and turns to see Josh staring at him, waiting for him to walk closer where a light flickers at the ceiling.

Josh can hear faint talking at the other side of the door. He didn’t know the hotel would have other guests except for him and the pianist (Tyler, Josh reminds himself,) but he doesn’t have time to think about other people because Tyler is standing right in front of him now.

His face is oddly unreadable and suggestive at the same time, confident. Josh is not sure what it is that is on his mind, but even so, he knows.

Josh invites Tyler to his room, even though Tyler is paying for his own. They both know it, but Tyler follows him anyway.

Here, Josh can see his face even closer. It’s dry and flaky from the cold and the pores of his cheeks are tiny, some of them infected and red. There’s no room for Josh to miss it as his lips touch Tyler’s, who bends under him without resistance, pliable like paper and so, so white. Tyler moans softly and his whole body seems to flow under Josh’s, sliding everywhere.

Touching, peeling, Josh’s fingers won’t get used to the silk his hands get to roam. All long limbs and skinny sides, Josh moves his rough palms over Tyler’s surprisingly warm, no, hot skin that keeps trembling at the contact, yearning for the intimacy of another human being. Josh can’t get used to the feeling, but he can’t get enough of it either as those long lashes and fingers feather his face. Lips, too.

And in the middle of the shared heat and never ending moans and Josh buried deep inside of him, Tyler moves, he moves and moves and moves, making Josh clutch the wooden (and waxed) headboard so hard that he screams, and Tyler screams, and it’s all they want and all they need, for it’s enough to take them away from here, away from everything.

Josh wants to take him away. And as he watches Tyler lay there and gasp for breath and be somewhere that is not here, he can see that Tyler is not fine. Not in this place, to say the least.

Josh reveals his thoughts when he pulls out after the crest of their high slowly subsides and the words make Tyler buck beneath him and open his salty eyes with a gasp. For a while, Tyler doesn’t say anything, but only thinks. He lifts his head so he can stare at the golden valley between their wet bodies that gets its light from the desk lamp that stands on the table next to the bed, and with his weakened voice he tells Josh _no,_ tells him that he is _wrong,_ but Josh is never wrong.

Tyler proposes something else. He wishes Josh to stay. His face is hidden in the crook of Josh’s neck as he says the words.

Then he leaves. Josh is left behind to watch the half-empty bed they shared for a blissfully long and mournfully short amount of time. He keeps looking at the spot Tyler’s body had pressed into, growing cold every second now as the pendulum swings. He tries to find his answers from there, hoping they’d be buried somewhere in the white, crumbled sheets. He looks at the door Tyler used to exit. Josh gets up, naked, and goes to the window from where he can see his broken car sitting in the parking lot, dead.

He supposes he can stay for a while.

 

*

 

It’s been almost a week since Josh arrived to the town where he’s been ever since his car broke down. That day, soggy leaves and dirt covered its sides and windows. That much has changed now, because it has started to snow. Hard. Josh couldn’t leave now even if he wanted to. Too much snow, they say, and no one to clear the roads off of it. _Nobody goes out when it snows_ , the old townspeople Josh talks with say in unison and nod in agreement.

It feels more than a week, Josh blinks as he looks at his wristwatch that keeps shooting foreign digits at him. But it’s only been a week since he met Tyler for the first time, and ever since that day they’ve fucked each other into the mattress every night, have kept each other warm at the cold hours of their need. And for a while, it’s okay.

 

*

 

Josh saw a man parking his car in the parking lot of the hotel this morning when he was fixing his own with the tools that he was lucky enough to get from the hotel. The man greeted him happily and asked him if the place was open. And affirmatively Josh had answered, that yes, the hotel is open, and the man had scurried inside. Josh hasn’t seen him ever since. He supposes he’s spending all his time in bed or watching Tyler play. Nobody goes out when it snows, and it’s been snowing for days now.

After that, Josh cleansed his hands off of oil and went back inside to watch Tyler.

Tyler’s eyes were closed as he reigned their lives behind his piano. And Josh listened as he sung about the demons lurking in the dark, how they lie, and how it doesn’t seem to stop, ever.

Josh doesn’t need anything else.

 

*

 

Josh sits on his bed, facing the windows. He watches the snowflakes fall languidly outside their hotel room. The silence is nearly deafening as he stares into the eye of the night. Josh hears the rustling noise of sheets beside him and turns to look, only to see Tyler slipping into his lap. His naked body is over him and his chest so close to Josh that everything behind it gets hidden.

Josh leans closer, resting his forehead against Tyler’s chest as Tyler wraps his arms around his head silently, embracing him, loving him. They’re drowsy like the feathery rain falling from the sky. Once again Josh gets to bury his fingers into the white as his hands find Tyler’s hips and the bluish veins that run red underneath his skin. Josh traces his palms through the deep line between Tyler’s shoulder blades, over his ribs, down his spine again, and lower. In between their legs, under the soft sheets.

Tyler stops him, pulls his palm up. He goes slow, as slow as the snow falling outside the walls as he stares Josh dead in the eyes. Josh forgets the snow and shivers when he feels a tongue filling his palm and a slimy puddle of saliva landing in it seconds after. The bed creaks under their weight as Tyler leans forward, pushing Josh on his back. Tyler’s jaw is wet as he comes down and says how he wants to see Josh do _things_ to himself, a whisperer at his ear.

Dirty sounds break between them. Josh can barely hold on when he feels a pair of hands spread his legs and Tyler slipping between them. Luckily his mind stays there where Tyler holds him, and they rock together, moving ever so slowly. Back and forth they go, simple sentenced words pour out and land somewhere they don’t know. Through his half-lidded eyes, Josh can see that Tyler keeps his own open and wide, intently watching him.

Josh can’t do the same.

When he opens his slits again, Tyler is out cold. A gentle weight rests on top of him, and the snow is high on the windowsill.

 

*

 

Josh sees Tyler’s face as he sleeps and presses his nose to the back of his neck. Tyler smells like the same wood and dust that fills the air in every corner of the building. Yet he smells and feels and tastes like _Tyler_ and only Tyler as Josh senses him with all his being. Josh watches his shoulder rise and fall slowly. He wants to kiss away the goosebumps on his skin.

He hasn’t told Tyler that he fixed his car and has already packed his things and some of Tyler’s, too. Josh presses his eyes shut at the thought. He can’t sleep.

 

*

 

Josh watches the white landscape in front of him as he drinks his early morning coffee on the back porch of the same hotel he’s been living in for way too long now. It’s nothing but white white white and grey trees in the distance that go down the valley and stand at the edge of the precipice as if waiting for something to tip them over.

Josh can barely see the trees now. The blizzard is too strong. Tyler is smiling at the sight, looking almost healthy as he does so. Josh watches him as he stares at the view, cheeks rosy and colorful as ever as the cold air of the dawning chills him to the bone and makes him curl his fingers around his hot cup. Josh presses his hands hard against his own mug as the time around him stops working. He still doesn’t tell Tyler about the car. It wouldn’t matter right now anyway.

Josh thinks the snow is going to reach up until it touches the sky.

Somewhere in the hotel, blood drips through the sewer and the white turns red.

 

*

 

There’s no sight of Tyler that night or well into the next day. It’s the very beginning of December and Josh walks past the same closed doors in the same corridor where they collided for the first time. Tyler doesn’t show himself before Josh makes it to the end of the hallway. He goes down the stairs, all the way to the restaurant. He stands in the large hall, looking around himself. The red curtain is immobile as ever, with nothing to dance it with this time around. Folded in heavy waves that hang from the ceiling, it absorbs all the light in the room in itself. It’s velvet, Josh concludes without even having to touch it.

Regardless, he goes to touch it. The bartender fails to see him as he walks towards the stage to drown his hands in it. Without the lights, it looks almost black, heavy like a maw of a waiting beast.

The piano Josh has learnt to call Tyler’s sits quiet in the corner, its keys tired and loose, dormant. It’s the first time Josh sees it from Tyler’s perspective, first time that he sees this room from his perspective. Josh runs his hands through the furry surface of the curtain. It makes a noise at his touch. He presses his palm against it, and it caves slightly. A rutting sound emerges then, screeching against the floor, and Josh pulls his hand back. He listens in confusion as the sound continues, before he realizes that it comes from somewhere else than the boards on the floor that the hem of the curtain scrapes against.

Josh listens. He can spot the tinkle of forks and knives, plates and cups now. He turns around again, only to see that the room is as empty as before, unlighted, and nobody there to eat anything. Josh frowns, and he’s sure that he hears Tyler’s agitated voice then.

And it comes from behind the curtain.

Josh goes to peek to the other side of it. There’s little space in between the wall and the red, he has to squint his eyes to see. And there, behind the curtain, he sees a hole in the wall.

Josh pushes himself behind the velvet and shuffles sideways. Dust sticks to his clothes with static, smelling like a fog of cigarettes. Josh squeezes himself through it, and finds himself standing between a narrow space of two walls now.

It’s not a hole, but a corridor. And a single door waiting at the other end of it.

The curtain slips heavy from his fingers, rippling to the left and right, and for a moment, Josh thinks he can feel it push his back to take a step forward.

The sounds echo stronger here, with no insulators hoarding them. Tyler’s voice comes again. Josh hears him choking on tears. Someone hushes him, and then comes laughter.

It’s more than enough to make him take that final step.

He doesn’t knock. He pushes right through.

The door takes him into a room with no windows in it and a long table with a group of foreign people of all different ages sitting on both sides talking and laughing and smiling. There, sitting right in between these people is Tyler, his head pressed low, staring at the plate in front of him, trying to swallow his misery. He looks sick. Utterly sick, Josh corrects himself.

No one in the room seems to pay attention to his presence, or they ignore him, and one part of Josh wants to leave but a woman in a long, solem green dress walks past him then and she gasps as she sees him standing in the hallway.

“Mr. Dun!” she exclaims enthusiastically. “It’s so good to see you, we’ve been expecting you here eventually.”

Tyler’s head shoots up at hearing Josh’s name, and he visibly pales as he sees the woman pushing Josh further into the room, her hand on his shoulder, a huge ring on her finger.

She sits Josh down next to Tyler. They don’t talk, Tyler doesn’t even look at Josh as he curls tighter into himself, shaking, terrified, terrified.

Josh looks away as a plate is brought to him and put under his nose. It steams, just like every single plate set on around the table. It’s the same dish on everyone’s plate. His, hers, on the old man’s sitting across the table. They don’t seem to mind his gazing, or his intruding for that matter. Tyler looks sick to his stomach as the same woman from before stands up, holding a crystal glass in her hand, raising it, and declares,

“Chili con carne,” she says and moves as if she was drunk, jeering, and she looks at Tyler and everybody starts laughing for some reason. “Tyler’s favorite, for his 27th birthday!” She’s pompous. Tyler doesn’t laugh, doesn’t look at anyone at all. He stares at the tablecloth and it makes Josh stare at the tablecloth. Tyler pinches the hem of it between his thumb and forefinger, so hard that the bone is going to snap.

The party starts dining. Josh watches them with their polished silverware and yellowed fingernails as they gorge, dissecting that thing that looks like meat. They eat and eat and eat, and Josh… he doesn’t touch his fork. The food smells as wrong as it looks.

He notices a red stain that has soaked the fabric in front of him. He presses his finger against it, scratches it. It scales off, small and dry.

“Beet soup, can you believe it?” the woman gasps in disbelief, and Josh looks at her and catches her following his finger’s motion. “I always tell him to eat carefully. These red stains, they’re so hard to get off.” Then she smiles, looks at Tyler and then back at her plate, and Josh thinks she has long eyelashes, they remind him of Tyler’s. She lifts her eyes again. She keeps smiling.

Under the table, Tyler’s fingers’ lock goes off and they twitch sorely as he gags, and Josh realizes that he doesn’t only look sick, but he is.

Tyler gets up, heavy chair screams against the floor.

“Mom, you can’t…” Josh can hear him say despite the sweaty hand clasped over his mouth. Tyler sways as he goes, and leaves the room.

It all happens so fast. Josh looks at him, then at her, and then he’s on his feet, running after Tyler.

He doesn’t apologize.

He thinks she’s still smiling.

 

*

 

Tyler’s not very fast as he stumbles down the corridor, one arm holding his stomach while the other drags against the wall. Josh reaches him in no time and grabs him before he falls over. Tyler snaps the way the bone of his finger had threatened to do and fights himself free with a scream, doesn’t know that it’s Josh. Tyler spins around to see. Fever veils his eyes, the sickness dulls his strength.

They stare at each other, Tyler breathing heavily as Josh feels the heat of Tyler’s body escape his fingers.

Tyler doesn’t say anything, but he looks like he might break into tears, shaking his head in shame. He walks the rest of the distance to his hotel room without a word, and locks the door behind him.

The hotel falls hauntingly silent again.

 

*

 

Josh goes to his car. This is crazy. This place is crazy. Josh kicks the ground, snarls. The motion sends snow and blood in the air, and Josh’s eyes widen.

_Fucking blood!_

He repeats it. And he repeats it. More blood surfaces at every swing of his foot.

He looks around himself. There are more cars on the parking lot, roofs bending under the snow, but no one goes out to clean them. _Nobody goes out when it snows,_ the words echo in Josh’s head now. He doesn’t remember whose words they are, but they’re here now, used to give a cover whenever the hosts see fit.

There’s an empty spot next to Josh’s car. Josh remembers a man parking his car there days ago, before the snowstorm. There’s no car there now despite they said all the roads were closed. Josh walked through the snow earlier, and it…

Josh frowns, goes back in time.

He remembers joking with the bartender if they’ve made money of the man the same way they did with him, billing preposterous amounts of money from him. The bartender with the name tag Zack said they did, but that the man left the following day. It had stormed that day.

He starts thinking about the weird food in that creepy room for some reason and feels a sudden need to throw up.

But he doesn’t. Instead, a weird determination takes over him as Josh spits and starts digging into the snow that comes hand in hand with more red. The trails take him to a heavy door with tiny holes in it. Josh grabs the metal corners to yank the door open. It’s not as heavy as he thought it’d be, but only decayed, almost light. It opens easily despite the rusty hinges that moan at the pulling.

Josh glances down. He can see footprints messing with the snow, some of them red, walking in and out of the room that looks like a garage. Josh stares into the dark walls where the fading light doesn’t reach anymore. He listens, looks for an evidence of a presence of any sort.

No one jumps on him.

Josh steps deeper into the garage. He doesn’t know that someone is watching him, hiding behind the dark windows of the hotel in the opposite direction. Josh is too occupied with the mess around him. There’s junk everywhere, on the floor, on the walls, stacked up and hung everywhere. Josh turns his head to the left. He thinks he’s never seen so many tires in one place, and then he knows why, because he hasn’t. On the table is the toolbox Josh had borrowed earlier, and right next to it sits another box full of car signs. Nissan, Toyota, even a fucking Lincoln. There are all kind of signs and emblems, then metallic doors in one corner and in the farther end of the room is a car, wrapped in a gray fabric.

Josh gulps and lets his feet drag him to the car. He tries his best to make his mind stop running and in the darkness of the room Josh sees his hand pulling the fabric down and he has to put his other hand over his mouth to kill a scream that declares itself free.

Because the car is the man’s whom Josh saw, but only once. The windshield is bloodied, everything about the car is bloodied.

 

*

 

Josh rushes back to Tyler, doors stay behind and numbers descend as he speeds up the stairs. He’s going to squeeze the truth out of him with his own two damn hands if he has to.

He halts abruptly when he sees someone walking in the corridor. Zack, Josh states as he keeps at the landing of the second floor, peeking. The bartender carries a tray with him. A plate of food, with a glass of iced water set next to it. Zack stops at Tyler’s door. Three times he knocks against the wood. It takes a while, but the door opens ajar finally, cautious. Josh can’t hear their words from where he’s standing, even though they’re speaking agitatedly; their words are disjointed and have no logic in his ears. But it ends with Tyler whimpering as if he was in pain, and Zack steps into the room, and Tyler lets him.

The door closes behind them and Josh’s mouth opens as he frees a breath he was holding. Dammit. He doesn’t have time to stand here and wait. He needs to get to Tyler, needs to get their stuff before it’s-

Zack comes out, and Josh panics. No time to think, he dashes to the next floor, trying his best to make no noise as the steps wail under his weight.

And Josh waits. He holds his breath again as he hears Zack’s silent footsteps caress the red carpeting and then comes the creaking. One, two, three, Zack goes back to the restaurant, leaving Josh unnoticed.

Josh glances down, sees no shadows wandering below him. He leaps down the steps, waking the old weeper again.

Josh runs. He’s at Tyler’s door where his own shadow greets him as he lifts his hand. He’s about to knock, but before his knuckles hit the surface, a loud crash emerges, and a sound of glass shattering follows it, coming somewhere from the room. Fuck courtesy, Josh decides as he twists the knob, it is not locked.

The room is dark when he enters, but Josh doesn’t have to see to know the room by heart. It smells different today. Something like vomit burns Josh’s nostrils-

He hears a faint gag coming from the bathroom. A chink of light escapes through the door. Josh stomps and frees it simultaneously as he opens it and finds Tyler’s fainted form sprawled on the vinyl flooring, coughing, coughing, gastric acid violates his lips.

The tray has fallen off the sink’s edge, broken glass fills the wet floor now. Mindful of their presence, Josh goes to Tyler and turns him onto his side to stop him from choking. Josh rams his fingers into Tyler’s mouth to empty it from the rest of the spew. It smells, and it’s enough to shake Tyler awake.

Tyler coughs. Tyler is incoherent. He won’t stop talking about the flesh of a man he just spilled down the toilet. Josh has to lean closer to make sense of his words, and Tyler grabs his arms, repeating his chaotic thoughts over and over again. His breathing takes a turn into a fit of heaving, sporadic gasps as Josh gets up and sees what Tyler is talking about.

In the bowl float chunks of _something,_ like vomit it squelches in the water, and Josh doesn’t hesitate to get it out of his sight as he slams the lid closed and flushes the toilet. Tyler wails at the sound and covers his ears. He prays for forgiveness when Josh rinses the plate that rests abandoned in the ceramic sink.

Tyler shakes and keeps spitting about a broken promise. The one she never keeps, he cries. He’s burning up and out of everything when Josh goes back to him and hoists him up. Tyler’s head is too heavy for his neck to support it and it droops back, his throat clicking. Josh has to prop it on his arm and-

Shit. It’s no good. The fever is so high it burns Josh. He hisses, and curses. He needs to take him to a doctor.

But there is no doctor. Josh can only guess, but his fear comes true when Tyler reads his mind and mumbles something about the root of the mountain, says Josh, _please,_ and that’s all Josh needs to make his decision.

He gets up, bringing Tyler with him. Exiting the bathroom, Josh has to lay Tyler down and leave him on the unmade bed of tangled blankets to get his bags from his room. He leaves his key in there. He won’t be needing it anymore.

Josh goes back, grabs Tyler and ignores the small noise he makes. He wraps Tyler in warm clothes and carries him to the car. Josh struggles to find the handle behind its shield of snow and the white takes over the front seat as the door finally cracks open.

Josh doesn’t have time to worry about it as he puts Tyler in, and Tyler doesn’t say a word. Not now and not when Josh swipes the car clear of the rest of the blanket, and not when he tosses their things in the backseat. Slow words out themselves only when the doors are shut again and Josh starts the engine. Tyler asks, suddenly, _where_ _are we going,_ like he’d only just woken up to his surroundings, and Josh doesn’t answer, not when it takes so long for the cold motor to roar and respond. Not until he can get rid of the mirrored image of the hotel behind them.

 

*

 

The trees run in a never-ending blur on their left and right as Josh drives down the mountain roads. The snow is drowning, suffocating, and Josh thinks briefly how all the curves and the turns look the same.

Josh hears Tyler mumbling from time to time, and his mind is having trouble to tell his heart to slow down as it fails to tell his foot to stop pressing on the acceleration so hard anymore. Tyler whispers again, his words muted by the noise of the engine, unintelligible rendered by it and all Josh hears is a mumble. The snow makes the car slow down, and only then Josh understands what he’s saying. His senses connect with the sound, finally articulating. Josh hears, _I want to go back,_ and _please, let’s go_ _back._ Josh says nothing, for he knows nothing. All he knows is that he’s not going back there and he’s not letting Tyler return before their dirty little secret is in everybody’s ears.

From the corner of his eye, Josh can see Tyler curled up against the door and he’s seen him like this for half an hour already. And every time, Tyler whispers the same words. _Let’s go back._

Josh is not going back, he thinks he thinks but realizes saying it out loud when Tyler quiets down suddenly. The snow is thick and the road ahead is continuous white plane guarded by the tall trees, and Josh has to force himself to think about anything else then; to make his mind occupied with something brighter. He finds himself thinking about the way Tyler plays his piano, and the way he smiles and how it’s enough to wreck the time of its hinges and make it stop altogether.

Josh can’t see it in him now. All he sees is Tyler’s delirious hand reaching and grabbing the door handle, and then everything happens too fast as Josh hears it click open and the storm rushes in, beating and scratching at his face, and through half cracked eyes he sees Tyler’s powerless shape falling out of the running car. No, the car is not running, it’s more like snailing through the snow, but it’s enough to make Josh scream for Tyler, but the door is already pushed shut again by the wind’s hand.

Josh stops the car and rushes out and up the hill to the dark pack of clothes and limbs that writhe in pain in the deep snow. It’s Josh’s mind that fails to understand, fails to react, and it’s Josh’s voice that keeps screaming, keeps shouting out things at Tyler, asking him _what are you doing,_ while it’s Tyler’s face that has tears streaming down his red cheeks. And Tyler clings on his arms again, and all he says is, _I want to go back. She’s furious. Please. Let us go back._

And all Josh can do is mutter, _I can’t._

 

*

 

Tyler’s face rests next to him on the spread out seats in the car and Josh can’t stop wondering how his eyelashes are so long and it breaks his heart to see him so miserable. And while he kisses his lips he wonders if he ever tasted the stale flavor of blood while making love to him before deciding _no,_ he never did, and suddenly Josh doesn’t care that Tyler is connected to that place, that, in a way, he’s a part of the horror that happened there and is still happening. Josh doesn’t care and he doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to know.

Tyler is here with him, and they can’t keep going before he’s calmed down. Now it’s Josh’s turn to cling on him and Tyler’s restless breath is on his face, and as he lies next to Josh he’s still repeating the words. _Let me go back,_ he pleads, and Josh still doesn’t say anything as he shivers and brushes his fingers through Tyler’s locks. It’s weird, how the cold seems to creep out, when usually, it’s the one to creep in, Josh thinks.

So he gets up, and turns the radiator until he can’t turn it anymore, his fingers freeze under the warm gush.

He goes and lies back down then, taking Tyler with him. Tyler’s mouth gasps open and Josh’s fingers touch his lips, and Josh knows this is madness and the road ahead is endless and there’s no going back - Josh feels selfish as he needs the warmth that Tyler’s body is radiating. It reminds him of their time together, back then when things felt easier in the strangest way possible.

Josh needs it to remember. He needs to remember the heat he was buried in, and the way Tyler moaned his name as he took care of him in his bed.

How Tyler would make him forget about the snow that is all he can think about again.

He shouldn’t think about it. But it’s all he can do because it raps at the windows, keeps rapping at his mind and the glass starts to sweat under the cold while Tyler’s breath is warm and hitched and his cheek is cold under Josh’s mouth. Josh jumps as he feels Tyler’s icy fingers slither under his clothes. He calls Tyler by his name, confused, and Tyler says, _let me go_ , and suddenly, Josh feels a gap everywhere their bodies have met before.

Josh sees how Tyler’s hair sticks to his forehead and he sees how the clouds that come out of his mouth look like ash coming out of a volcano, and Josh is not sure whom Tyler thinks he’s seeing in front of him, but Josh says _no_ and _I can’t_ for the hundredth time tonight. Tyler’s eyes go frenzy at his words, he quivers in fury and then he’s pushing Josh away with the little strength he has left and he turns away, wraps his clothes tighter around himself. His body rocks back and forth, and Josh says _hey,_ and he tells Tyler to come back and stay warm and how they should stay warm together.

Tyler doesn’t answer, he keeps staring at an empty spot, and for a while nothing but snowflakes outside the damp windows of their car moves. Josh pleads, worried, but Tyler doesn’t answer. And it’s cold, it’s so cold, and Josh pleads over and over again and touches Tyler’s shoulder. And Tyler moves, oh does he move, and he shouts Josh to let-him-go, so loud that Josh feels his head hitting on something sharp. Then he realizes that he does, and distantly he can feel how Tyler quiets down and then cries out in horror. There’s something wet pouring down Josh’s neck; he can feel it as Tyler tears him back, and suddenly, Josh wants to scream, too.

Tyler lays him down, and suddenly, his shape above him is not so thin anymore. Like watercolor taking over a wet paper, Tyler’s outlines suffuse Josh’s vision. And Josh can only think of how beautiful of a person Tyler is, and he thinks that it’s something else than his tears that pour out of his eyes that soak the seats, and…

No, he doesn’t think anymore.

 

*

 

Josh sees nothing or he sees something that has no color, similar to black, but deeper. Like an empty vessel, it’s lacking any power possible, like the pulse at the back of his head. There’s a beeping noise, Josh can distantly hear, and then comes wailing. It’s pulling Josh, and in the dark of fumbling feet and uncertain fingers, Josh manages to grab a cold hand that finds its way in his, and it goes _why,_ so many times that Josh loses the count after ten and then he hears _I think I love you._ _So much,_ and Josh thinks that he loves the owner of the voice too, but realizes that he doesn’t know who it is.

In the darkness so black, Josh can’t see.

He can only listen - and try to feel.

Suddenly, he’s taken somewhere else, and Josh feels cold again. Why it feels so familiar, Josh can’t remember, but he dreams of his body being dragged through the snow, it embraces him, falling all over his face and his hair.

Then it stops, the dragging and all, and the black starts fading into grey - and beyond.

There’s no color again, but it’s different. This time, Josh sees, and his eyes water. It’s all, it’s all so _white,_ Josh huffs as he struggles to find the right word. It’s all so white, and it’s everywhere around him. Josh feels a slow breath at his neck, he can hear teeth chattering. In his dream, it’s cold and white and there’s almost no air left, and he thinks he has a blanket over him, a blanket made of his love - and ice.

There’s so much snow, so much white here, Josh says out loud, and he squeezes the hand that holds his, or it clutches his, and the breathing slows down, and…

Josh thinks, and it hurts. He opens his eyes, and nothing changes. There’s only white left after nothing, and Josh wants to scream as it burns his brain like a wildfire, and at that moment Josh becomes aware of his flesh that is the farthest thing from cold.

And Josh feels the tears pouring down his cheeks, and he can think again. So Josh thinks, and he _knows,_ that somehow, they’ve made it far below those precipices.

 

***


End file.
